The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
During the mating of two connectors, a lot of time is spent in alignment since there is often no proper guiding devices between a receptacle and a plug. Deviation or malposition of the plug by a small angle can make mating of the plug and the receptacle unsmooth, and even cause damage to a connector structure.
The U.S. Pat. No. 7,226,314 discloses a receptacle connector, which has an insulating body and a guiding shell. The insulating body includes a mating groove which is formed at the front end of the insulating body, and multiple terminal slots are formed on two opposite sides of the mating groove to accommodate multiple terminals. The guiding shell includes an accommodating space formed by an upper board and two partitioning boards. The upper board bends towards the accommodating space to form two elastic arms, and the guiding shell is located at a front end of an opening of the mating groove of the insulating body, so that the insulating body and the guiding shell can be assembled to form the receptacle connector.
In the patent, the guiding shell is fixed to the front end of the opening of the mating groove of the insulating body. When the receptacle connector is mated with a plug connector, the plug connector can effectively provide quick positioning for the vertical position under the guiding of the elastic arms, allowing a tongue of the plug connector to be accurately inserted into the mating groove, and accommodating the plug connector in the accommodating space of the guiding shell, thus reducing the time wasted by alignment failure during connector mating. However, in the patent, although vertical alignment can be accurately provided during mating of the tongue of the plug connector and the receptacle connector, a solution for horizontal alignment is not provided. During the connector mating, the tongue is prone to left-right deviation due to the incorrect horizontal alignment, and the insulating body of the receptacle connector can be scratched easily due to incorrect alignment of the tongue, thereby causing damage to the insulating body, and accordingly affecting the service life of the receptacle connector.
Therefore, a heretofore unaddressed need to design a new electrical connector exists in the art to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.